Box-office analysts expected The Hunger Games to open in style, but before those Thursday midnight screenings nobody predicted the final figure of $155m. When Lionsgate reported on Friday morning that North American audiences had shelled out $19.75m to witness the dark fantasy the night before, everyone began to revise their estimates up from the original $125m. Yet even the second round of crystal ball gazing fell below the mark. Before the weekend experts wondered whether The Hunger Games had the chops to overtake the first Twilight movie. They should have set their sights much higher.

The Hunger Games cost around $80m to make and obliterated the opening weekend of every Twilight movie to date and in the process ignited an already buoyant start to the year at the domestic box office. The $155m launch resulted in the third-biggest debut of all time, behind the final Harry Potter ($169.2m, July 2011) and The Dark Knight ($158.4m, July 2008), and the biggest opening for a non-sequel. There's more. The movie registered the biggest March debut in history with ease and managed in its first two days to eclipse the $119.2m lifetime total of Fahrenheit 9/11 to become Lionsgate's highest-grossing movie.

Add in the $59.3m international score from 67 territories and you get a worldwide launch of $214.3m. Not too shabby. What's the betting that before long Lionsgate executives will play the Harry Potter and Twilight trick and split the third and final episode into two instalments? After all, why not milk this cash cow for as long as possible?

There's no point in being timid about the franchise's prospects. Successful series and standalone hits need repeat visits to become truly massive and The Hunger Games looks a safe bet in this regard. The nascent love triangle, well-executed action sequences, political intrigue and eye-candy for both girls and boys are the prerequisites of the coveted four-quadrant hit that appeals to both male and female, old and young. There's a way to go on this first movie and don't be surprised if it finishes on more than $400m worldwide. The sequels inevitably make more money and as such Lionsgate could be looking at a four-film bounty of more than $1.5bn by the time this thing has run its course.

Tim Palen, Lionsgate's head of theatrical marketing and one of the most creative minds in Hollywood, ran a canny publicity campaign. (Palen is the man behind the Hostel and Saw campaigns and the terrific "Rubik's Cube" US one-sheet for the upcoming horror pic The Cabin in the Woods.) As the movie-industry blog Deadline points out, the US trailers didn't show any of the sequences inside the fight arena, which accounts for about half the movie. That whetted appetites and by the time audiences got to see the movie, those episodes didn't disappoint. There's a long way to go in the franchise and as they contemplate the second book – in my opinion the best in the trilogy – this pop-culture phenomenon is theirs to lose.